


Existence is Circular

by deborah_judge



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Gen, Rape Aftermath, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-06
Updated: 2013-05-06
Packaged: 2017-12-10 13:16:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/786444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deborah_judge/pseuds/deborah_judge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gina has survived and been implanted with memories from Caprica Six to keep her sane. Beneath those memories there's something that she doesn't want to remember but that she keeps acting out.  A remix of <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/366806">Bullet + Butterfly Wings</a> by <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/users/NicoleAnell/pseuds/NicoleAnell">NicoleAnell</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Existence is Circular

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Bullet + Butterfly Wings](https://archiveofourown.org/works/366806) by [NicoleAnell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NicoleAnell/pseuds/NicoleAnell). 



There is a woman who watches the prisoners and likes to see you beaten. Her hair is light and she's beautiful, and whenever she comes by your cell there's another strike, another whip, another lash across the face and stick across your limbs and down your breasts. Your legs aren't broken yet but they will be, and your arms. You know this because you've seen it around you. This is why you were brought here, to be broken, and then to die. "Why?" you ask, and she hits you. Cylons never give a reason, they were made not born, they have the power here, and they don't have to explain what they are.

It's not a surprise. You knew that this would happen when you were sent by the resistance to set up the bomb that would have killed Gaius Baltar.

*

Gina walks through the corridors above the place where the prisoners are kept. Her brother next to her isn't Leoben, he refuses to use that name, says the real Leoben is somewhere else, but he's her brother and might be the only friend she has. His hand is warm on her back. "I can do this," she says.

"You can," he says. "Existence is circular." The memories in her aren't hers, she remembers kissing Gaius Baltar on a city street filled with light, but they're there to cover other memories and she knows what they are. There was a time when she was chained hand and foot, spread open and hurt. It happened. It's what happened to her. 

"I want to hurt them," she says. "I want them to suffer. And I want to watch." The memories in her don't want suffering, but she does. She wants to watch it, to see someone else suffer it all. That way she doesn't have to feel it, not now, not ever again. "I want to see their broken and useless limbs. I want them to stare like an insect beating against glass. I want to shoot them in the head and see their blood on the floor."

The silence sits between them. Her brother's been tortured too. Or, he hasn't, but he has the memories, like all her memories of Gaius kissing her in the sun.

"Tell me about Baltar," her brother says. 

*

Every time you see her there's another scar, and you count them to mark the days. You won't leave here. You know you won't leave here. You know what your future is going to be, and it will end in this room, in your blood, your arms and legs broken. Whenever she sees you there's another whip, another lash. 

In a moment of stillness, you ask why. "For Baltar," she says, and there's something in her voice. Protectiveness. Terror. You wonder if Cylons can feel love.

"I tried to kill him because I want him dead," you say, and you watch her face in your moment of triumph before the next blow comes.

*

"It's not me," GIna says. "I'm not the one Gaius loved." There's a loss when she says it, so she says it whenever she can, because she needs to speak the truth. "It's not me. But I remember it." In her memory she's kissing Gaius on a street filled with light. His security codes are in her pocket and she knows, or rather she suspects, but really she knows, that he gave them to her because he loves her. She knows what love looks like, she's seen it so very little, like a rare and precious thing. Love is a miracle, and the point of miracles is that they don't happen every day, or even every time you need one, or even every time your survival depends on it. "It wasn't me," Gina says to her brother. 

"You did make love to him," he asks, or says, and she knows he's envious. He will never touch his Kara, he's told her as much, although he will belong to her always, he's not the self that was chosen for that destiny. And she supposes she's lucky, Gaius once put his arms around her, his mouth on her neck, his body inside her, his mouth on her bruises and scars. She can't feel it, can't remember what it was like, but she's lucky that she had it. There are and will be so few times that a human will love a Cylon, so very few, that even an echo of it is precious, even the memory that she can't feel of Gaius making love to her while imagining her to be the self she's not. It doesn't make sense that they were made like this, needing so much and having to suffice with so little, borrowed memories and scraps of fragmented love given to another self.

Gaius had kissed her scars, the scars she still has. If there are scars there is a time those scars were given, there is a time when there were men inside her and a sharp metal pipe and chains in a barred room. This is what happened to her, the self that she is. The self that she is had not been sent to love Gaius, but to love a dark-haired woman who had hurt her and beaten her and given her to be used by her men. This is what had happened to her. This is her memory, that belongs to her alone.

*

There is a woman who likes to see you hurt. She watches you when you're being beaten, she looks at the marks on your body, breasts and face. "Because I was here," she says, though you didn't ask why, you haven't said anything, your jaw is too numb to speak. "Because I was you," she says. She picks up her gun and you think she's going to shoot you, but then the door opens and your chains unclasp and fall and rattle on the prison floor.


End file.
